Modern data centers comprise at least three key components: servers, storage systems and networking components. All of these three key components require cables therebetween. Servers are connected to storage systems via cables, servers are connected to networking components via cables, storage systems are connected to network components via cables, storage systems are connected to other storage systems via cable, and so on. The number of computer and storage systems in a data center has grown significantly on average in previous years. At the same time, the cabling between all these three key components is growing over proportionally, not seldom exponentially. The reason why the cables are not really visible in typical data centers is that the cables are buried in a double floor. Especially in seasoned and data center it becomes more and more difficult to determine the exact route of a cable in the double floor, which becomes a serious problem if components and the data center may be removed and replaced and cables may be reused for other purposes.
But not only in data centers is the exact course of a data cable a problem. The problem also exists in professionally used buildings such as offices, factories, shops and shopping malls. Often poor or no documentation at all is produced during construction work. Any kind of maintenance (e.g., finding a damaged cable in large buildings or performing physical network changes in a data center) becomes tedious and error-prone.
One known method for tracking cables is to connect a radio transmitter to one point at the cable and measure the emitted radio signal from the cable with a dipole antenna. The radio signal is emitted perpendicularly to the running direction of the cable. A cable changing directions can be seen as a series of dipole antennas. However, such a setup does not provide information about a length of a cable, or where exactly the cable is broken. Additionally, trying to identify the course of a cable with the known method would consequently lead to errors, as will be described by FIG. 6.